1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for reducing the booting time of a mobile communication terminal, and more particularly to a method for reducing booting time of a mobile communication terminal, which switches to an idle screen mode in which a user can make a phone call or transmit/receive character messages by separating a user interface task to initialize an application program simultaneously with executing an initial screen, after driving the user interface task concerning the communication performance created from a memory unit when a mobile communication terminal is booted.
2. Description of the Related Art
It was common that communication by mobile communication terminal was performed using a voice-grade signal in its early days. In the second generation, the communication by mobile communication terminal evolved to a communication scheme of adding signals such as characters, etc., by using digital data. The third generation mobile communication system is evolving to a multimedia communication scheme in which a video signal is added to data signals including voices, characters, etc. Recently, as the mobile communication terminal is required to support a diversity of services, the mobile communication terminal has various functions, and accordingly, needs a memory in which a large quantity of data can be stored. Memory which is widely used in a digital camera is capable of storing huge amounts of data. Therefore, in order to offer many data services, the mobile communication terminal is equipped with memory having a massive storage capacity.
The memory corresponds to a space in which basic cords and fonts are stored, and a part thereof is used as a user data area. The memory has a characteristic such that a small amount of data cannot be accessed in a scheme of an absolute address as in a ROM because a used area cannot but be erased by the sector (i.e., 64 [Kbytes]) in a case where an update of the memory is required after the memory has been used once.
An embedded file system manages a memory through a file system while all tasks are created during booting the mobile communication terminal. User data (e.g., a phone book, a Short Message Service (SMS), download contents, etc.) whose size is large are to be stored in an area of the embedded file system. The embedded file system should go through a memory initialization process in which file information is aggregated in order to freely read/write information stored in the area of the embedded file system while the embedded file system is booted at the start.
The memory of the mobile communication terminal has programs stored therein, such as programs for controlling a general operation of the mobile communication terminal, a User Interface (UI) task which can perform various programs on the same platform besides a part which performs an initial screen created as the mobile communication terminal is being booted, and programs for booting in order to switch to an idle screen that a user can use from an application executing unit that carries out an application program concerning the initial screen (e.g., animations, images, moving pictures, etc.) in the UI task.
FIG. 1 is a flowchart illustrating a booting method of a mobile communication terminal according to the prior art.
At present, although the time necessary to perform an initializing process is much reduced by many modifications of algorithms, as illustrated in FIG. 1, if the procedure moves to step 110 where a user powers up from step 100, where power source of the mobile communication terminal is OFF, tasks including the embedded file system are generated in step 120. It will be a good guide that all task software of the mobile communication terminal is carried out by tasks (e.g., UI, RX (receive), TX (transmit), SND (send), FS (file system), NV (network variable), etc.)
In step 130, the UI task, which can perform various programs on the same platform besides the part performing the initial screen among created tasks, is initialized, and operates.
After a platform in the UI task is driven in step 140, the initial screen including animations, images, moving pictures, etc., is carried out by the application executing unit in the UI task in step 160. The application executing unit carries out an initialization of the application program in step 150 before carrying out the initial screen, or in step 170 after carrying out the initial screen is completed, and then a change of the idle screen mode is accomplished in step 180. Because an initializing process of a relevant application program should be performed during driving the UI task, it takes a lot of time at every booting.
Since the conventional mobile communication terminal takes a great amount of time in booting, it inconveniences the user.